


Day by Day

by firefright



Series: Age Reversal AU [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Age Reversal, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Gen, M/M, Panic Attacks, Past Character Death, Past Tim Drake/Kon-El | Conner Kent, Past Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Tim Drake is Red Hood, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-12 01:31:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20556005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firefright/pseuds/firefright
Summary: It's never a good idea to torment yourself with what you can't have. Tim does it anyway.





	Day by Day

**Author's Note:**

> Hey all! So, this is a thing I actually wrote a long while back, but held off on posting because I didn't want to put it up until after Tim made his reappearance in Wing Beats in Reverse (which, if you've clicked onto this without reading that story, I highly recommend you go back and do that first for this one to make any sense). Of course, during the time between this being written and that happening, I completely forgot about it, and actually just rediscovered this one-shot about a month ago. Hopefully you'll all enjoy it now anyway XD
> 
> In terms of the Wing Beats timeline, this story takes place during the same period as chapter 3. As you'll see, Jason and Tim spent their time dealing with the fallout of what happened very differently.

Tim wakes up, as he does every morning, to the feeling of the 2 a.m. cargo train heading east across the country shaking the confines of his room.

No matter what other forms his dreams take, the rumbling of its passing always twists them back to the same old dreary subject, dredging up the memory of fire and twisted metal crashing down on top of him from the depths of his mind. The heat and pain: both in his wrists as he pulled frantically on the wire binding his hands to try and free himself, and in the corners of his ruined mouth when he screamed for help he knew wasn’t coming.

He wishes he could say that was the worst of it, but in the end it was the smoke more than anything that had done the job for him, as Timothy Jackson Drake died suffocating underneath rubble on the Gotham riverside. Alone and broken, his shattered body found too late by the man whose ideals he’d sworn to uphold.

A more optimistic person might count it as a mercy that the nightmare never gets so far as his resurrection in the Lazarus Pit before he snaps out of it, but Tim doesn’t. He knows that nightmare will come back to him in its own time anyway. It always does.

Now that he’s awake, he reaches and touches the smooth skin of his cheeks as he always does, letting the discrepancy between what the nightmare tells him should be true and what actually is assure him that he really is awake. There are no lacerations, no purposefully clumsy stitches made by Harley’s hand. His face is healed and whole, and he can pull as much clean air into his lungs as he wants to with every breath he takes.

Today, Tim only has to tell himself that five times over before he’s finally able to sit up, which is a marked improvement on the day before.

The remote for the television is on the dresser next to him, and Tim reaches over to pick it up, switching on the local news channel to bring some light and sound into the room that isn’t the rumbling of the now distant train. At this time in the morning there’s no traffic outside to fill the silence for him, so he’s forced to make do with other methods until his mind settles back down again.

The TV plays, and Tim reaches for his phone next out of habit. The screen lights up at a press of the power button, and he sighs when he sees another two missed calls on the screen from the same unknown number.

Ra’s. He’s starting to get impatient. But Tim still isn’t ready to go back to him and the League yet, if he ever will be. The truth is he’s just stalling now when it comes to Demon’s Head, until he comes up with a plan for what he wants to do next now that his business in Gotham is concluded. Going back to Ra’s would be… a shudder takes over him, a wave of revulsion, and with quick, precise hits of his thumb on the screen, Tim deletes the notifications before dropping the phone back on the dresser and resettling his hands in his lap, squeezing them tightly together.

He should move now, get going on the next step of his routine before the sun rises and all the normal people wake up and start going about their business in the city, but this morning Tim finds himself looking at the wardrobe on the other side of the room instead. 

It’s a deviation from the norm, which means he should ignore the impulse. Anything outside of his normal routine is dangerous, but despite his best attempt at resistance, he finds himself unable to ignore the call.

Slowly, Tim stands up and pads across the carpeted floor on bare feet to open the wardrobe’s doors after undoing the padlock he installed on the outside first. He doesn’t keep much stored inside it, just the things he can’t risk leaving out in the open; his bag, guns, and so forth. But today it’s what’s on the bottom shelf that takes his focus. 

The sleek red visage of the Red Hood’s helmet looking back at him. 

It’s the same one he used back when he enacted his plan to cleanse Gotham of her most dangerous rogues, but now marred by a spider web of cracks that ruins the once perfect blankness of its face. Tim reaches down to pick the helmet up between his hands, before touching his thumb to the point of impact and then pushing inwards until he hears the sound of the shattered pieces of plastic grinding together. Considering the force with which Damian’s escrima stick had struck him, he was lucky the damage had been so superficial.

Lucky that he was wearing the helmet at all, so it wasn’t his skull that fractured under the blow.

Tim had known Damian cared about Jason Todd, Ra’s had told him that, with an air of commiseration and shared bewilderment that bordered on being patronising. It was criminal, he’d said, that his grandson preferred the company of some no-name street child when he’d rejected Tim’s own. There’d been pictures provided of the two of them together as well, where the younger boy was smiling and clearly happy to be running at Nightwing’s side. So Tim had known he should have expected retribution from the trueborn heir of Wayne and al Ghul for his actions against Jason — far more so than for what he’d done at the asylum.

But he hadn’t expected it to hurt so much when he saw the extent of Damian’s attachment to Jason in person. He’d come at Tim with real fury on his face, and in that moment the sense of alienation from his supposed family Tim had carried with him for all the years since his death had come crashing back down around him, alongside the realisation that his actions that day had truly severed any chance he ever had of going back home to them.

Even if they still wanted him, he couldn’t go back after this.

Tim had thought he’d already made peace with that idea in the months following his resurrection, only it turns out not so much. He might not blame the kid, but the truth is that Jason Todd had gotten what Tim Drake never had, and for a moment — as he and Damian matched each other blow for blow on the burning rooftop of the asylum — he’d found himself wishing that he had let Ra’s kill the boy after all. He wished he’d let him drag Todd off to some League base in the middle of nowhere when he’d offered, so he could deal away with him quietly and put the third Robin in a grave he wouldn’t be able to come back from.

And that thought, that thought _terrified_ him, for how closely it revealed the Pit still was to the surface of his skin. Just the same as when he lost control and struck Jason back in his Gotham hideout. How in the moment he’d enjoyed it, felt _vindicated_ by it, and what it would mean if the boy’s death really did come to pass.

Then Damian and Bruce would have known real pain. Then they’d have understood how Tim feels now, and how he felt when he came back to life, screaming out of the frothing waters of the Lazarus Pit as his bones snapped into place and his heart was forced back into beating again. As his cheeks sewed themselves back together from the grizzly smile the Joker had carved through his face with a penknife.

All that agony, all that loneliness; the memory of his death raw and shrieking as it rocketed to the forefront of his mind. Maybe then they’d have some inkling of how he felt, waking up to the knowledge that the man who saved him in the end was another who called himself Batman’s greatest enemy.

His thumb punctures through the crack in the helmet into the electronics underneath. Behind Tim’s eyes, the constant throb of the Lazarus Pit rises up, ignoring his attempt at rational discourse and begging him to give into its green-fuelled rage. It whispers that there’s still time, he could still go back and take revenge if that’s what he wants. No noble quest to rid the world of a danger Batman never would; only blood. Blood and pain.

Tim gasps at the force of that desire, even as he pitches forwards towards the tiny bathroom attached to the apartment and begins to dry heave into the toilet, clinging to the helmet in his hands like a lifeline the entire time. Until eventually he digs his fingers so hard into the fracture that the skin of his thumb is sliced open and blood starts to run down across the terrible face he’d chosen to call his own.

_Focus. Focus on the pain, don’t let it win. You control it, it doesn’t control you._

If it weren’t for Ra’s and his teachings, Tim thinks the Pit would have succeeded in driving him mad long before now; the way it had when he first came back to life. That was when he’d killed for the first time, slashing open the throat of the first of Ra’s’ guards who’d tried to grab him, and damned himself forever by doing so.

Jason had begged him to go back to Wayne Manor and let them help him, but he hadn’t understood that Tim had already severed that option for himself long before he returned to Gotham to enact his plan. He’d been beyond help even then, and the only thing he can rely on now is the cool crisp lines of logic, because letting himself feel anything else is too dangerous.

The panic attack keeps going, and Tim does what he has to do to work through it. Reciting formulae and doing complicated math equations in his head until the vicious clenching of his stomach stops and he can lean back away from the toilet, slumping down heavily on the floor.

In the other room the television is still playing, a vague buzzing on the edge of his awareness that Tim is eventually able to turn his focus on. When he’s like this the droll sound of the newscaster’s voice is a far better alternative than listening to his own.

So Tim listens, and when he finally feels ready, he stands back up, using the side of the sink as a support while leaving his helmet on the floor. There’s a well used bottle of mouthwash waiting for him there, and Tim makes sure to give his mouth a good rinsing with it first before he reaches for his toothbrush. He’s always careful with this next part, because if he does it too quickly he’ll make himself want to vomit again.

Brush, rinse, spit. The wall behind the taps in the bathroom is empty, since Tim removed the mirror that was hung over the sink the day he moved in here, specifically so that he wouldn’t have to look at his reflection every time he so much as needs to take a piss. It’s easier that way. He never knows exactly who it is that will look back at him when he sees his reflection, and he’d rather not risk the chance of seeing the green eyes of Ra’s’ favoured pet Robin in his face instead of blue.

Tim puts his toothbrush back in its stand, then rakes his hand back through his overgrown hair, considering whether to shower or not since he’s covered in sweat. He’d like to, but he’s wasted the good part of an hour already, so he decides that it will have to wait until he gets back: he can put up with a little discomfort in the name of keeping to his routine.

Returning to the bedroom, Tim picks out a few items of clothing from the case at the bottom of his bed before changing out of his sweat stiff pyjamas. Next are his boots, which he slips onto his feet before tugging an oversized grey sweater on over his head; one with a hood big enough to conceal the upper half of his face from view when he tugs it down low.

If anyone looks at him now, they’ll just see another aimless teenager roaming the streets at night, rather than one of the most wanted men in the country, even if the general public don’t know it.

It’s January, but the weather in this part of America is nothing compared to what it is in Gotham at this time of year. The temperature mild enough that Tim doesn’t feel cold at all, despite the early hour of the morning. He likes it like this. When it’s still dark and there’s no one else around to watch him on the streets. He can just walk and listen to the sound of his own footsteps, as well as the distant sound of the waves on the shore when he draws closer to the beach.

There’s a twenty-four hour Starbucks along the way, and he stops off at it just like he does every morning to grab himself a cup of plain black coffee. It’s a habit, maybe a dangerous one, but the sleepy-eyed college dropout manning the counter never really pays attention to him, busy as she is playing on her phone whenever she’s not making his order. With no other customers around, he doesn’t have to worry about providing a fake name to her either. She doesn’t ask and he doesn’t tell, and they’re both better off for it.

It takes another twenty minutes of steady walking from the coffee shop to reach his destination. By the time he gets there, Tim has already finished his drink, and he makes sure to drop the cup in the nearest recycling bin. He always did like this city for how conscientious its citizens are about the environment.

His favourite bench is empty, as always. So Tim sits down on it with his hands tucked inside the front pocket of his sweater while he looks out across the ocean, where the security lights from the T-shaped building across the bay reflect on the water.

“This is the last time.” He murmurs to himself as he observes Titans Tower from the safety of the mainland, the same way he does every morning. “This is the last time I do this.”

It’s some sort of self-punishment, he’s sure. That’s the only explanation there can be for why he chose San Francisco of all places to run to after the mess he’d made of Arkham, and why he keeps coming here every morning to stare at another thing he’d chosen to leave behind him. The people who live here, the ones that still remain out of the group he used to know anyway, are as much gone from him as his family is back in Gotham city. He knows that, he understands that. But still he keeps coming here and looking, as if that will change anything.

It’s hard not to wonder if such behaviour makes him crazy, after all. Especially when he knows that if he just opened his mouth and called Conner’s name right now, he’d—

“No.” Tim shakes his head. “You can’t.” He’s talking to himself, too, which is not another point in his favour on the sanity scale. But it’s true, he can’t do that. He can’t, no matter how much he wants to. No matter how much he misses him, because Conner deserves better than to know Tim the way he is now. He’s not the boy he loved anymore, and he never will be again.

Bruce hasn’t told Conner he’s alive, at least not yet, and if Tim has one wish it’s that things will stay that way for both their sakes. He’s playing with fire coming here as it is, and if he actually saw Kon in front of him…

Tim has no idea if he’d still have the resolve to leave then.

And maybe that’s the point of this; some part of him wants Conner to come out here and find him, which is another reason why he has to leave San Francisco soon. He keeps telling himself that, but after two weeks he’s still here, making a liability of himself. Eventually Bruce will think to look in this direction for him. That’s if Ra’s doesn’t beat him to it first.

He just… he just wants to have it to himself a little longer. This. The crappy apartment, the morning walks. Even this self-torture feels good in a way. He’s spent so long doing nothing else but working towards a goal. _The_ goal, and now that it’s done, failed in many ways, succeeded in others, he just feels so… so… 

Empty. Lost. Without purpose.

Tim swallows. Just one day more. That’s all. He’ll just give himself one day more. Then he’ll leave, he _swears._

Just one more day.

**Author's Note:**

> [My tumblr](firefrightfic.tumblr.com)


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